Faerie Folly and Wizard Wands

Chapter Seven

The next morning, Sabine walked back to Miss Joan's to place an order for curtains and sheets, along with foods and a few cleansing supplies. Remarkably, there were still no rodents to be seen, no moths, no bugs, and nothing, strangely, was overly dusty or broken.

After going back to her house, she began to put away all drop cloths and rearrange the meager furniture. Each bedroom had a closet, and within those were forgotten pillows and a few nice quilts with unfamiliar patterns and swirling colour. She made up her bed and one other, and made her own room to her liking, and then, the day was spent.

That night, as she read a book she had found tucked in the small and slanting attic, she felt that she was being observed. The attic was, by the way, a place where she found many useful and ornamental objects to make the place more cozy.

The feeling of being observed was not evil or bad in any way. Whatever was watching was pure and meant her no harm, just curiosity. Yet all nearby were steep hills and the mountains. She knew of no dwellings nor people. This feeling of being observed stayed with her until she went up to bed. When her room lit, she felt immediately that nothing watched any more-almost as if it was something decent and polite.

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The days were spent practically, not like her carefree, whimsical days of youth; those which were tucked into her mind. Even when she had lived with Granna, the tasks were always menial and easy. But before Granna-the poetry of her youth was mystery, though nightly Sabine dreamed of the woman and, less frequently, of the man she began to subconsciously call father.

When the train brought her curtains and supplies, Miss Joan brought them herself, to see Sabine's progress. She came puffing up the lane. Here, it seemed Sabine's senses heightened in their supernaturalness, and Sabine felt her long before she saw her.

Sabine waited at the top of her stairs.

"Broughtyourthings, girl," Miss Joan announced, and huffed up the stairs after the younger woman.

Sabine took some of the brown packages from her, and Miss Joan followed me in.

"Didgood. Looksnice," Miss Joan appraised, then went to the kitchen to plop the packages and herself in two of Sabine's strong kitchen chairs. "Knewdidrightselling."

Sabine frowned, struggling to comprehend Miss Joan's quick speech, covered in a British accent. She put her own carried bags on the table.

"Do you want something to drink, Miss Joan?" Sabine asked politely. Miss Joan nodded, still out of breath, and Sabine went then to fill one of the glasses she had found in the cupboards.

"Sohowyoucomin'?"

Sabine sighed, gave Miss Joan her water, and asked carefully, "If you could slow your talk, Miss Joan, I would greatly be obliged."

She regarded the young woman with her beaded eyes over the rim of the glass, then put it down and said, in the normal pace,

"Terrible sorry. Supposin' my accent not too easy."

Sabine smiled, relieved, and sat also. "Yes, it is rather hard to comprehend. Now, let's see what's all in these."

She unwrapped many pairs of store bought white, plain cotton curtains, and the narrow rods to hang them on. Food supplies and seeds for a garden were also there, along with the washing and cleaning supplies.

Miss Joan watched, and said, taking the pains to speak slowly;

"Sure nice having woman near. No village for miles."

Sabine looked up. "But I thought Mead-."

Miss Joan shook her large head. "Nay. Mead is province, not town."

"Oh." Sabine glanced out the western window, where the mountains sat so near. "How isolated, isn't it?"

Miss Joan shrugged, then heaved to her feet. "Got to get back. Husband want meals regular."

With that, she departed, lumbering down the lane.

Sabine hadn't known the woman was married.

Miss Joan was the only contact of any sort that Sabine had with anything. She couldn't count the nightly presence she felt watching. Sometimes, in the dark, when she stood bathed in light inside her house, she would stare out at the mountains, almost wishing that whatever force it was, that it came calling, for she was lonely, and whomever observed was kind, she felt.

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As days rolled, Sabine spent much time in the garden. She found she could make things grow unnaturally fast, and make objects such as twigs and dead leaves spring up from the earth into actual flowering plants. This delighted and unnerved her, but it allowed her to soon have a thriving garden and flower beds, with a few well-grown trees in her yard. It was while she kept her flowers one summer afternoon, that she felt him coming.

He was, she knew, male, as he came nearer, and he was what had spent nights looking in on her. She felt him before he came near, and she stood, her hands dirty with earth, facing the west, where the mountains loomed, and he came nearer.

She could feel, too, a permanence he brought, though it was vague and unsteady, but the first she'd ever known.

He came trotting up, his ears perked, tail wagging: an immensely large, black dog.

He came right up through her gate, then stopped, his head cocked to the side, and they gazed at one another for a long moment.

"Well, hello finally. About time you came along."

At her voice, he walked near, and licked her hand. She bent to pet his shaggy big head, and knelt again at her flowers.

"Look!" He was the first outside contact she had had in weeks, so she wished to show him her newfound powers, even if perhaps he was only an animal who did not have any way to communicate verbally with her. "I can make things grow. Now, watch!"

As she planted a dead leaf, the dog laid next to her, and concentrated with a human-like stare on the area of rumpled ground. Moments later, a green shoort, pale and delicate, curled up and began to grow.

The animal half-barked and stood quickly, looking from me to the growing plant. Sabine shrugged.

"Not any girl of one and twenty years can do that, I suppose." She looked down. "Ah, puppy, you'll stay with me, now? Or you need to o back to the hills?"

The dog barked and skipped to the gate. Oddly, she knew he understood every word she said, and it wasn't her unnaturalness that made it possible. He answered her in the way he could, and she knew he had to go back.

"You'll come often, dear pup?" she asked, and knelt, to scratch his ears. "There's so much oddity in my life-I must speak with something-or someone!"

He again licked her hand, then bounded away. But a contact had been made, and that night before she went up to her room, she waved at him, in the direction she felt him to be, and knew, somehow, he had seen her, and had said good night.

Her puppy, as she called him, began spending much time with her inside and out, and he grew well-fed on her food. She sensed often he wished to stay in her white, sun-washed house, where it was warm and lovely, and heady with the sweet perfumes of flowers. But he always went back to the high mountain hills, as if he was obligated, and as if something forever awaited his return.

She spoke often to him, and he answered in barks and whines. He was her protector, in a fashion, and her friend. Soon, she took to confiding her strange talents of supernatural sense, and her odd and growing powers. With him, she discovered how she could make a plant grow, blossom, and whither and die with a few touches of her fingers and thoughts in her forehead, all in a matter of seconds. She found she could call apples and pears to drop right in her hand, ripe and ready, and that she could sing with birds and understand the nature of bees. All this her puppy watched and observed with her in her garden. She grew to love him dearly, and often wished him to stay all night and forever as her companion.

And she told him of her dreams, how the man she called father appeared only as a brief laugh, and a deep voice speaking words in an abstract language, and how she never saw him but for his eyes and a flash of his brilliantly red hair. It was as if she contained only this memory of a time long ago and nothing more, a frantic fragment of the past trapped alone in the recesses of her mind.

She told of the intense fire in the man's sapphire eyes, and how only joy and goodness surrounded him. She spoke of the woman in the dreams, who alluded her-the aura of sadness that followed her, the pixie features, and quick flitting and flying, and the deep green miry wilderness that was the setting, she told her pup of the only sentence of the language she understood-the wispy tinkling voice of the lady, saying, "He is a great one, you father."

Through all her endless days of speaking to her puppy, he would listen, and watch her. In truth, he was far from a pup-he was a great, black, beast of a dog, though she did not fear him. And it seemed the more she pondered aloud her dreams, the more vivid the man she dreamed of became to her, and the stronger her supernaturally odd senses an powers became.